Rustling Thoughts

Christian and I were on our way home from our college class (about a mile or two away from the campus) when we got rear-ended. Re-wind. It was the middle of the afternoon one glorious day in July. Christian and I had just gotten out of our college class, we had even managed to get a really nice parking spot right by the door and mostly in the shade so the steering wheel wouldn't as hot as a stove when we left (an event that happened far too frequently, as my poor fingers can attest to). We had been on the road home for a minute or two when I realized that the car behind us was a large pick-up truck. Definitely a diesel.  Hey, don't worry. He probably won't tailgate you, just go the speed limit and don't make him mad. Light No.1: he stopped behind us no issue. Green light. Ok, maybe he's not the tailgating type . We stopped at another light. There was one car in front of us. Light turned green. I started a little slower than normal. Now, as far as we ca...

A while back, I mentioned going on a Haiti trip in 2014 with Mom and Lydia. I also said that a two-year anniversary post was coming up. This is it, by the way. June 5, 2014. Mom, Lydia, and I met up with the rest of our group that morning (7am, I think? Not sure though), who had flown in from Kansas the night before. (We were with a group from  Haiti Lifeline Ministries ) We landed in Florida, made a gate change, and got on the plane to Haiti. (I must say, it is a whole lot easier to get out of the US than it is to get back in) You know Haiti; definitely not classified as a first world country, so there was none of this 'wandering off two by two' in the Haitian airport. A truck from the orphanage we were going to met us, and the baggage was loaded on. Everyone piled inside (it was open-air, and the seats were essentially metal bleacher benches, no seatbelts). The orphanage was a good 30-45 minute drive. I say drive, but the roads were mostly unpaved and chock-full of ...

I've seen several of these, and thought, "hey, why not?" (actually, that's how a lot of my posts are materializing right now. Funny, that.) Beautiful people is a tool for writers to essentially get to know their characters better. Each month ten new questions are posted at the links provided in the above picture.  Anyone can join at any time, and you needn't feel obligated to do it every month. I'm going to do Reiyna, a character from my camp NaNo project, "The Inventor's Daughter," a Beauty and the Beast  retelling. ( Pinterest board ) And, because I feel like it, I'll let her answer the questions herself. 1. How often do they smile? Would they smile at a stranger? Well, since I run a coffee shop, I have to smile at my customers. It's an unwritten law of good service.  Given the corrupt society of Jukuvar, it isn't safe to just smile at a stranger while on the street. In fact, it can be qu...

But first, let me give you the backstory of my cookie baking career. Maybe four years ago, I decided that I wanted to make cookies. Mom helped me choose which cookbook to find a recipe from, and explained a few things before leaving me in the kitchen surrounded with ingredients. I decided upon an oatmeal chocolate chip recipe, followed it to a T, and everyone enjoyed it. For a while, I followed the recipe exactly, until, one fateful day, we ran out of one of the ingredients. Mom quickly thought of a solution, and from then on, my recipe-tweaking days began. One time, we were on vacation, and Mom had specifically asked me to print out the recipe so that I could make cookies. Unfortunately, that was the one thing I forgot to pack. So, I had to figure it out from memory and general deduction. Success! The cookies turned out fine. Over the past year at least, I've not followed any recipe, and only one batch was dubbed a flop. While it was still edible, only a few people ...

Wherein Chloe is a tad bit frustrated with the progress of "The Exile and the Songbird." Once upon a time, I had the brilliant idea to smash together "Robin Hood" and "Sleeping Beauty." I was very excited about it, even went so far as to sign up for NaNoWriMo just so I would have the extra motivation to write it. NaNo came and went, and I was still under 10K words. Not so bad, considering this was my first ever big story, first ever NaNo, first ever a lot of things. I had so many ideas for how I wanted the story to go, the only problem was that the majority of the scathingly brilliant ideas where to take place in the middle/end of the story, thus I had to write all the boring parts first. I know you're thinking "eh, whatever, that's just a part of writing." And I know that is true, but I got bored (I guess?) so I unleashed sarcasm upon all the characters in order to keep myself entertained. Here's the issue though: *pause f...

So. I got my first job. Cue Mom and Nana excitedly dancing around the room while I stand in triumph. Ok, I really am excited! The lady who hired me is a photographer who does seniors, families, and horses. She's really very nice, when we sat down to do the interview, she pulled out a notebook and said it was basically her brain, and that some days her phone is her brain as well. She loves to talk, and is very easy to listen to. Her studio is about 15-20 minutes away, and her house is about two minutes away. For the first few weeks, she'll mostly be teaching me how the ropes of what she does, so I'll not be paid, but that's completely fine, I wasn't expecting anything more than that. I start tomorrow. Now, back to NaNoWriMo, which I am already behind on. By like, more than I should feel comfortable with.

Yesterday we met up with some new friends to go surfing off a beach a few miles south of Lahaina. We were warned multiple times that the water would be quite shallow, and that sea-urchins would be practically EVERYWHERE. Mom specifically said, "No stepping on sea-urchins on Friday." We had a blast! I'm pretty sure that Ava caught the most waves. The water was very murky. You couldn't see the reef a few feet below the surface, but if you put your foot down, you could definitely tell it was there. We were told to wear water shoes to protect our feet (good call). Ava, Lydia, and Gabe were the first ones out on the boards, and after a little while, Christian, Mia, and I went out. I'll be honest, I probably did the worst out of all of us. The fact that it had been years since we were taught a very basic lesson, and that the water was a bit too shallow for my comfort, really made me nervous. I didn't ride a wave all the way in standing up, but I did ...

After a very long time of seeing hilarious lines from this movie on Pinterest, we finally borrowed it from the library. Last night Lydia, Christian, and I watched it. To be fair, the lines were still funny, and we found that a good deal of the movie was ok for our tastes, but to be brutally honest, we all disliked it immensely. Some of our friends recommended the movie to us, but it was after we watched it that we discovered that they had only seen the good and funny parts of it. We were not amused with the fighting scenes. There was only one of them that we were grossed out by, but still enjoyed because of the funniness. Yeah, it was the "tis but a scratch/flesh wound" one. We did find the bridge scene quite funny, it's probably the one we quote most often out of the whole movie. Also, the opening credits. Just. Oh. My. Goodness. Seriously? Makes me want to study credits more. We did not like the french guard person thingy. About 2/3 of the way through the ...

Today mom allowed us to sleep in until 8:00. Ava only stole the covers off of me about, oh say...three times. But her arm only crossed no-man's land once, so I consider that a record on her part. We headed out of Alabama and into Mississippi to visit some friends in Tchula (pronounced "choolah"). We arrived around 2:00pm, just in time for a very belated lunch at our friend's house. Now, a word about these friends: They are a family of 5, two parents, twin toddler girls, and one newborn son. The dad is a pastor of a small church, and has a stash of guns, guitars, and knives. As soon as we finished lunch the knives were pulled out. Christian got his out of the car, and I pulled out my little penknife. We tested their sharpness on paper. Christian's needed a bit of sharpening, and I won't even begin to tell you how dull mine was, but it did take a very long time to get it decently sharp (I won't be getting a China-made knife again). After the knives w...

After four days of very stretched-out driving (4-7 hours each day) we have all arrived safely at our destination- a friend's house close to DC. Today was spent on a tour of some places in the vicinity. It was...very informative. Don't get me wrong it was interesting. I love tours and seeing new places, but after driving for four days, more driving was just, yeah. Especially since we needed to leave the house no later than 6am so we could meet the tour early at 7, which was already meeting at 7:30 before leaving at 8. We were all glad mom had scheduled extra time to find a place to park. The following pictures came from the tour. Before leaving the parking lot, I told everyone to 'do something cute' Hmmm, not bad, considering I couldn't see what I was doing. This is a replica of the statue on top of the Capital Building. Ordinarily, the white thingy would not be there, but the whole dome was being renovated, so it was for our protection. ...

I can cross off 'mow a lawn' from the list of things I've never done before. I can also cross off 'get stuck in a tree,' and, 'kill a snake.' The story: My friend (we call her Aunt Cendei in our family) needed help with some mowing on her property. Seeing as Lydia was NOT going to do it, and Christian was going to be away somewhere else, I was the natural choice. So, this morning, at 11:00ish I learned the ins and outs of controlling a riding mower, for the first time. In all honesty, I was doing great, until that tree got in the way. I had been mowing for about an hour, when I decided that an area under a tree needed to be cut. Being confident of my abilities as an expert mower, I quickly went forward... and jerked to a stop. I had completely forgotten that there was a u-shaped arch of metal, taller than me, behind my seat. If it had not been there, I could have easily scooted under the branch. But it was there, and it did not fit under the tree....

I've been tagged by Olivia, over at  Meanwhile, in Rivendell . As this is the first time I have ever been tagged, I should like to accept. The rules (because, you know, you can't have a game without them): 1. Paste the button onto your blogpost. 2. Leave a new list of questions (or just pass on the question list you answered) and tag a few people of your random choice  (and say why you tagged them, if you have time!) (Be original and nonsensical in your own question-creativity - make the blogging world a cheerful place :-) And be disastrously random.) Now for the fun... 3. Write down three facts about you - one of them is WRONG. Let your commenters guess in the comments which one is wrong (and tell them in the comments after a while).  4. Answer the questions of the person who tagged you - make it all super random and interesting :-D So those are the rules! Let's start off with the three things about me. 1. I hate bacon. 2. I...

Ok, so this is my Quote Queste entry, or whatever you call it. It's a bit late, but hey, it's still March. Quote Queste was started by  Miss Melody Muffin The rules for the game can be found  HERE The prompt for this month: "It's too early in the day for killing princes." The story: “Why are we doing this again?” “Because we were paid to. Besides, we need money to eat and we need to eat to live.” “Just checking.”  Riyana crouched down in the alleyway, her little sister, Akinya beside her. “What time is it?” “I do not know. How many times must I tell you that I am not a clock, Akinya?” “Whatever time it is, it is too early in the day for killing princes.” “When we get paid to do a job, we do not get to decide what time it gets done. Come, we must go.”  Riyana slowly crept out of the city, Akinya followed. The castle stood up on a hill, surrounded by a wall. The sky in the East was still dark. Good, we still have plenty of time. She wove he...

Hi there! Welcome to my little blog. I'm Chloe, The Shy Introvert. I'm very new at this, so bear with me.  Here goes! First of all, and most importantly, I am a Christian. I am constantly reminded that I am not perfect, but I'm ok with that. I know that I am just the way God created me to be. I'm VERY shy. It's not even funny.  I'm 16 (I have absolutely no idea why they call it "sweet"). I'm home-schooled, and I love it! Seriously, why doesn't every one home-school? We're not crazy, I promise. Different, yes, but not crazy. I'm the second-born of six (yes, I said six) kids. I may pick on them from time to time, but if you tease, fight, or are mean to any one of them... You get the idea, right? I love them all very much. As a family, we all love going to the beach. I won't say where though, because of reasons. Sorry about that. I like photography. I'm not very good ye...